This page is considered an official guideline on Wikimedia Commons.
It illustrates standards or behaviors which most editors agree with in principle and generally follow. Feel free to update the page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes.

This page explains the role of administrators (sometimes called admins or sysops) on Wikimedia Commons. Note that details of the role, and the way in which administrators are appointed, may differ from other sites.

Administrators are experienced and trusted members of the Commons community who have taken on additional maintenance work and have been entrusted with the admin tools by public consensus/vote. Different admins have different areas of interest and expertise, but typical admin tasks include determining and closing deletion requests, deleting copyright violations, undeleting files where necessary, protecting Commons against vandalism, and working on templates and other protected pages. Of course, some of these tasks can be done by non-admins as well.

Administrators are expected to understand the goals of this project, and be prepared to work constructively with others towards those ends. Administrators should also understand and follow Commons' policies, and where appropriate respect community consensus.

Apart from roles which require use of the admin tools, administrators have no special editorial authority by virtue of their position, and in discussions and public votes their contributions are treated in the same way as any ordinary editor. Of course, some admins are influential, but that derives not from their position as such but from the personal trust they have gained from the community.

After clicking on the appropriate button and creating the subpage, copy the link to the subpage, e.g. "Commons:Administrators/Requests/Username", edit Commons:Administrators/Requests and paste it in at the top of the section, then put it in double curly brackets (e.g. {{Commons:Administrators/Requests/Username}} ) to transclude it.

If someone else nominated you, please accept the nomination by stating "I accept" or something similar, and signing below the nomination itself. The subpage will still need to be transcluded by you or your nominator.

Any registered user may vote here although those who have few or no previous edits may not be fully counted. It is preferable if you give reasons both for Supportvotes or Opposeones as this will help the closing bureaucrat in their decision. Greater weight is given to an argument, with supporting evidence if needed, than to a simple vote.

Promotion normally requires at least 75% in favour, with a minimum of 8 support votes. Votes from unregistered users are not counted. However, the closing bureaucrat has discretion in judging community consensus, and the decision will not necessarily be based on the raw numbers.

Neutral comments are not counted in the vote totals for the purposes of calculating pass/fail percentages. However such comments are part of the discussion, may persuade others, and contribute to the closing bureaucrat's understanding of community consensus.